★★★☆☆ Honorable Mention
(High Fantasy) When an accident kills most of the fish the tree-people depend on, everyone has to go dormant except one who has to watch over rebuilding the shoal and protecting the rest while they sleep. (5,181 words; Time: 17m)
"The Longest Season in the Garden of the Tea-Fish," by Jo Miles [bio] (edited by Vanessa Rose Phin), appeared in Strange Horizons issue 04/13/20, published on April 13, 2020.
Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)
Review: 2020.213 (A Word for Authors)
Pro: This is a nice little tale about how Elja struggled to restore the breeding stock of fish while keeping herself and as many of her people as possible alive. The author makes her unique world come alive, and the story makes us glow with each success and cringe with each setback.
At the end, one expects there to be a price paid for this, and it’s a fitting but endurable one.
Con: Except for Aidjiri, none of the other characters is really developed at all, so the loss experienced by the trees in the garden doesn’t have much impact.
I didn’t have a lot of trouble with the what-if, but it was a bit of an effort to accept the idea of fish that like to live in hot tea which magically animate trees that swallow them.
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Jo Miles Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
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Pro: This is a nice little tale about how Elja struggled to restore the breeding stock of fish while keeping herself and as many of her people as possible alive. The author makes her unique world come alive, and the story makes us glow with each success and cringe with each setback.
At the end, one expects there to be a price paid for this, and it’s a fitting but endurable one.
Con: Except for Aidjiri, none of the other characters is really developed at all, so the loss experienced by the trees in the garden doesn’t have much impact.
I didn’t have a lot of trouble with the what-if, but it was a bit of an effort to accept the idea of fish that like to live in hot tea which magically animate trees that swallow them.
Other Reviews: Search Web
Jo Miles Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
Follow RSR on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, or E-mail.
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